Previews

Fallout 3

After fiddling around with V.A.T.S. and taking out some gigantic ants, we followed the cracked road ahead of us toward our destination, a town called Megaton. As we walked, we scavenged a bit and found a rifle similar to ours in an old mailbox, as well as some stimpaks. As was the case in Oblivion, weapons in Fallout 3 gradually degrade as you use them, and you'll need to repair them if you don't want to be left weaponless in the middle of a firefight. You can do this using parts from other weapons you find laying around, as well as taking them to skilled repairmen in the outposts you come across.

As for the Stimpaks, you'll be able to use them during combat by accessing your Pip-Boy and heading to the Stats tab. Once you're there, you'll see an icon of your body, with damage percentages attached to each area. Your foes can target your body parts too, so you'll need to keep track of where you're taking damage. If you take a few shots to the leg, for instance, you'll quickly notice that your character moves more slowly. Through the Pip-Boy, you can use the stimpaks to heal the individual limbs, or just take one to divide the benefits equally. Or, if you prefer, you can set the stimpak to one of your hotkeys (again, the Xbox 360 version features a d-pad based system similar to the one seen in Oblivion) if you want to just use it on the fly.

When we finally made it to Megaton, we were greeted just inside the gate by Lucas, the town's sheriff. He explained that he didn't want any trouble in his town, and that he wasn't afraid to use violence to enforce the peace. This gave us a chance to check out the conversation system, which is pretty standard for the genre. You'll be able to choose from a number of different responses, some of which are quite a bit ruder than others. How you speak to people will alter the way they look at you, so being nice to people will give you a better chance of being able to sweet talk them later on.

Upon finishing with Lucas, we immediately headed for the nearest cantina to grab a cold beverage and chat with the town's populace. You'll come across people that won't say more than a few words to you, while others love to chat it up and tell you all about the other denizens of the town. There's plenty of gossip and information to be gleaned from these loose-lipped citizens, which is how we learned about Megaton's own cult, the Children of the Atom. We decided to check out one of their meetings, where we were preached at in a shanty made of corrugated metal.

Once we finally made it to the bar, we met a bartender with horribly scarred skin that wanted to speak with us for a bit. The fact that one of your first responses to him is "GAH, F@! What are you?!?" gives you a pretty good idea of the game's particularly sick brand of humor. We saw this pop up not only in the conversations themselves, but in the missions we were given. The best example comes in the already infamous Mister Burke, who wants you to set off the undetonated nuclear bomb sitting in the town's square. Any game that allows you to wipe a whole town off the face of the Earth (especially after meeting its citizens) is alright by us.